AI’S ARRIVAL MEANS PEOPLE NEED BETTER SKILLS: ACCENTURE
The Philippines already has “a good base of engineering talents” but would benefit from more students pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or the STEM track in senior high school), so they’ll find high-skill careers that will be in increasing demand as artificial intelligence matures, an Accenture official said at the recent Transformation Summit
Accenture Philippines is encouraging the academe to offer advanced courses on science and mathematics for graduate students to land jobs in industries already driven by innovative AI (artificial intelligence) technologies.
JP Palpallatoc, Accenture managing director for technology, said the country needs to produce a more multi-skilled and high-quality talent pool for it to catch up with economies already making huge investments in the digital economy.
He said industries globally are slowly weaving AI into their operations to cut down on repetitive tasks, reduce costs, and produce more.
“We already have a good base of engineering talents here but we advocate that students continue to engage themselves in science and technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses,” said Arvin Yason, lead for technology at the Accenture-Cebu Delivery Center.
New factor of production
He said there is a need for the country to elevate from a low-skill to high-skill labor economy, with AI and other technologies now capable of handling the so-called dirty, dull and dangerous jobs.
Accenture, in its study released in September 2016, revealed that the impact of AI technologies on business is projected to boost labor productivity by up to 40 percent by fundamentally changing the way work is done.
In the Accenture report “Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth,” Mark Purdy and Paul Daugherty point out that artificial intelligence’s true potential lies in its “ability to complement and enhance traditional factors of production” like labor and capital.
Working with Frontier Economics, Accenture modeled how AI might affect 12 developed economies--with Japan as the only country covered in Asia--and said it has the potential to double the annual economic growth rates in these countries by 2035. The United States stands to benefit radical- ly from AI because of its “strong entrepreurial business climate and advanced infrastructure.”
Palpallatoc said they see AI adoption in industries not as replacing humans in their jobs, but freeing them from basic and repetitive tasks and motivating them to upgrade their skills and move up in the labor value chain.
Human touch
He noted that the human element is still needed as these machines need to be trained and guided. Humans feed information for this technology to function.
During the 2017 Transforma- tion Summit held in Cebu’s Marco Polo Hotel, Palpallatoc presented the Technology Vision 2017 research of Accenture, which identified five technology trends essential to business success in today’s digital economy: AI is the new user interface; ecosystems as macrocosms; workforce marketplace; design for humans; and the uncharted.
Already, AI is used in a variety of ways, including the translation function on search engine results; facial recognition in border control or immigration counters; and auto-pilot and assisted braking features in airliners and automobiles.